


in which our heroes (improbably) got away

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Child Abuse, Everybody Lives, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, flagrently ignoring established house elf canon because it's terrible: go team, i suppose in a sense kreacher is here, non traditionally formatted and by that i went ham on bullet points, will i add other characters later. yes. will i add them now. no.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29185887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: james potter, lily potter, and regulus arcturus black are less deceased then they should be.it's all sort of stupid, honestly. the dark lord's downfall has ever been himself.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Anonymous





	1. PART ONE, or, WE EXPLAIN HOW THIS PARTICULAR PLOT CONTRIVANCE WORKED IN OUR HEROES FAVOR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is not. super edited either. we simply live like this. we simply live like this, forcing strangers on the internet to read harry potter fanfiction i am too embarrassed to directly link to my main account. fuck you, joanne.

  * It is the year 1979. Harry James Potter will be made an orphan in 1981, but we aren’t there yet-- in fact, Harry James Potter has yet to be born. The prophecy that will define his life has not yet been uttered.   
  

  * In another life, Regulus Arcturus Black will die in three months time. He was marked two years prior, in the summer before his sixth year, dark magic burned into his upper-left arm while he stood very still and said nothing at all. He was never a cruel child, Regulus Arcturus Black--   
  

      * Perhaps that isn’t true. Children are often cruel, and Regulus was a good child (a good pureblood child) and a good son (a good Black, the spare turned heir) and he said his p’s and q’s and the vile words that dripped out of his parents mouths were quite at home in his own.   
  

      * He loved his brother. He still does. That will never be enough.   
  

      * More to the point, he loves _Kreacher_. Perhaps that will.   
  

      * Perhaps there’s more to it than all that.   
  

      * (It had all seemed very far away, all very _theoretical_ , and it had been with a clinical detachment he’d discussed bloodlines and purity and magical strength. The muggleborn witch his cousin Bella murders over dinner is not far away at all, and neither is her corpse, sent floating up to the ceiling. Someone laughs. Regulus feels ill.)  
  

      * (Mother is so, _so_ proud. Regulus is a good son. He does not hate her. He is not afraid. He is a good son, nothing at all like Sirius, does nothing that could invite her wrath--)  
  

  * Three months before Regulus Arcturus Black is set to die, Lord Tom Marvolo “Voldemort” Riddle is plotting. A common occurrence-- If he is not plotting, he is scheming, and if he is not scheming, he is setting his plots and/or schemes into motion. Voldemort should probably find a less violent hobby.   
  

      * He has the locket (has had the locket for quite a while now) and he has a victim set to slaughter and a Horcrux to create and it’s been an excellent month.  
  

      * This isn’t about that, except for when it is. It all comes down to the elf, really.   
  

      * Voldemort does not particularly trust Regulus Black, though he has Bellatrix Lestrange’s favor and that goes farther than his name alone ever would. He doesn’t trust Regulus Black because that Black boy is _squeamish._ Afraid, of course, but fear Voldemort could tolerate. Fear, he encourages. Regulus Black has pity for mudbloods and fools and _Sirius Black_ , whom Voldemort despises with a personal sort of rage.   
  

      * However. Voldemort is not in possession of a house-elf, and house-elves are discreetly miserable little things. He has a horcrux to hide. The Black elf will do.   
  

      * House elves…   
  

      * For all of his scheming, Voldemort had never _thought_ very hard about them. House elves, bound brownies. Wild magic personified. They can do all sorts of curious things.   
  

  * So it’s not Regulus Arcturus Black that throws the first stone, really. The one that sends ripples across the pond. The dubious honor belongs to the house-elf the Black’s call Kreacher, who will not know of his involvement for many years to come.   
  

  * I digress.   
  

      * (I digress, further. JK Rowling is a bigot and for the purposes of this little thought experiment we will _not_ presume so-called “house-elves” are happy to be enslaved: what they are is viciously proud, and polite, and bound to the letter of their word even if the deal is rotten. Hogwarts, of course, invites only _free_ brownies to enter its halls-- what they get out of it is the subject of much debate, but the grounds are pristine.)  
  

      * (Kreacher prostates himself before the Lady of his house, and he takes pride in his work, but anyone with sense between their ears knows he’d pay back the indignity thrice over if the contract were ever voided and he found the opportunity. They aren’t kind things, fairies.)  
  

      * (...Regulus, though. Regulus, he likes.)  
  

      * (Anyway.)  
  

  * There are many curious things about “house-elves”, about brownies, about the little-people, but perhaps the one that interests Voldemort the most is the simplest thing they can do: when a house-elf needs something, they call it, and when they don’t, it is… stored _._ Elsewhere, they say, when pressed. _Elsewhere_ , they insist, when hurt. _Elsewhere_ , Voldemort considers, when the elf he was questioning is dead.   
  

      * A lesser wizard would give up on the exercise as wild, elf magic, not the sort of thing any respectable wizard would attempt to replicate. Voldemort is not a lesser wizard, or respectable, and more to the point Tom Marvelo Riddle has always been curious and a perfectionist both.  
  

      * How could a _house-elf_ manage something _he_ can’t, anyway? Him! Heir of Slytherin! _Lord_ Voldemort!   
  

      * (The dark lord’s downfall has ever been himself).   
  

  * A month passes. Lord Voldemort oversees the slaughter of the McKinnons (the father, the mother, all three of their children, that muggle bitch they had over for tea) personally, and he does what he did all those years ago when he was sixteen and coming into his own power: he rends his soul and tucks the piece into Slytherin’s (his) locket.   
  

  * He learns about Brownies. He learns about _elsewhere_.  
  

  * It’s tricky magic, old magic, but it can be said that every Brownie is born in possession of a “pocket” of sorts. Out of sight, out of mind. What interests Voldemort the most is the timeless nature of the bubble: living things do not age, not _elsewhere_. It’s not much of a surprise, when one remembers that Brownies are kin to wilder things yet-- and time passing oddly is one of the hallmarks of Fairy Country. But it is curious. Useful, if Voldemort can manage it.  
  

      * Perhaps he can’t create one, in the end, but it is with smug satisfaction that Lord Voldemort discovers something else about _elsewhere_ : when a house-elf dies, the pocket does not die with them.   
  

      * Ownership can always, always be transferred, if you find the right words to say, and Voldemort is quite good at that.   
  

  * Sending things too-and-fro from _elsewhere_ is difficult: it requires nothing less than absolute, wandless intent. Lord Voldemort picks up the art quickly, but even he finds living things hard. They have a tendency to… explode, when placed into the pocket, or taken from it. Explode, or leave important bits behind. Sometimes they simply fall dead, as still and silent as if Voldemort had cast the killing curse on purpose.   
  

      * It is frustrating. Lord Voldemort is frustrated.   
  

      * Still, he’s bound to figure it out eventually _._ He does figure it out eventually-- mostly. He tries it on animals, pets. The accuracy can be dodgy. Lord Voldemort does not advertise this fact.   
  

  * Another month passes, and Lord Voldemort uses the Black family house-elf to hide his horcrux. He expects the batty old thing to die. It does not. This was a mistake-- not his first, or his last, but an important one.   
  

  * Regulus Arcturus Black tends to Kreacher’s health and plots _.  
  
_
      * Let’s tell you something else about Regulus Arcturus Black: he’s clever, yes, but not half as clever as he thinks he is. He is, more than anything else, eighteen years old.   
  

      * In another world, Voldemort will not notice his machinations because Lord Voldemort may not _trust_ Regulus Arcturus Black but he _certainly_ has better things to do then to micromanage a silly little boy. In fact-- even in this world, Voldemort doesn’t notice.   
  

      * Walburga Pollux Black is a different matter entirely.   
  

      * Walburga Pollux Black does not want to believe that Regulus Arcturus Black is anything other than what she wants him to be: her son, her _only_ son, a proud pureblood wizard and death-eater both. Obedient, unquestionably. Ideal, unquestionably. She has spent much of her time and energy on that boy, after all. Her only heir now that the _freak-bloodtraitor-nosonofhers_ is out of the house, as much as that _freak-bloodtraitor-nosonofhers_ had been blessed with more talent (talent that he squandered, no less!).   
  

      * Regardless of what she wants to believe, Regulus is acting shiftily, and if there was anything in her life she regrets it’s not being more decisive when the signs began to show in _the other one.  
  
_
      * He is her heir. She does not want him dead. No, she wants him fixed-- so she takes his wand away and locks him in his room and tells Dearest Bellatrix to knock some sense into the boy, wouldn’t she?   
  

      * Dearest Bellatrix hurts him, and digs through his things, and-- “ah, ah, ah, _naughty cousin!_ ” finds the note he was writing.   
  

      * Dearest Bellatrix is rather angry, after that.   
  

  * It would be an understatement to say that Voldemort was pleased when Bellatrix dragged her jittering (the Cruciatus Curse leaves its mark) cousin in front of him, as he had better things to do. It would be even more of an understatement to say that Voldemort was _angry_ when he read the note.   
  

      * (Kreacher is a bitter, angry thing, and the last act Regulus Arcturus Black manages to commit under his own power for a good long time sets him free, to Walburga’s horror and rage.)  
  

      * (This saves his life. Voldemort would have killed him in an instant. Kreacher spends the next ten-or-so years skulking about a particularly haunted neighborhood, playing nasty tricks on passersby. In America, they call little-folk like him _gremlins._ It is not hard to see why.)  
  

  * Sirius Black will assume that his brother is dead. Silly little bastard. Gullible son-of-a-bitch. His brother. _His_ brother. Walburga, mortified, encourages this assumption. Her heartbreak is genuine, for what little that’s worth. The funeral is a somber affair.   
  

  * Regulus will spend the next few years (thought that is not how he experienced them) wishing he was.   
  

  * Here’s what happens: Voldemort hurts him, and when he is not hurting him, Regulus is sent _elsewhere._ It had initially been something of an experiment, as Voldemort had not yet successfully sent a human-wizard to-and-fro, but when Regulus was pulled out some weeks later wholly alive and entirely disoriented… well, that was a pleasant surprise.   
  

  * Despite it all, he never breaks Regulus. Not the way Bellatrix Lestrange will later break the Longbottoms, has broken countless others before and will break them after. No-- Regulus Arcturus Black will suffer, for his foolishness, for his audacity. But he won’t be broken.   
  

  * Time doesn’t pass _elsewhere_ , and so for Regulus Arcturus Black time only progresses in a succession of painful hours, occasionally interspersed by a few blessed minutes of paranoid respite. He begs for Kreacher. He begs for his brother. He cannot quite beg for Mother, or Father. He is eighteen years old, and trapped in that ageless pocket he will never be (outside, a year passes) nineteen (outside, a year passes) twenty (outside--).   
  

  * The Prophecy is spoken.   
  

  * Severus Snape spills the secret of its existence, an act that will haunt him for the rest of his miserable life.   
  

  * Harry James Potter is born.   
  

  * Severus Snape begs for something that isn’t his. Voldemort listens.   
  

      * The rock, tossed into the pond, sends ripples ever farther. Voldemort _listens,_ you see. Not because he cares for the life of the mudblood Severus is so taken with (a character flaw Voldemort will divest him of, one of these days) but because he is cruel, and vicious, and a cruel and vicious thought occurs to him, too tempting to pass up… if the moment arises.   
  

      * Voldemort does not like the Potters. No, even if they hadn’t birthed that wretched little thing-- that little boy, the one the prophecy _must_ be about, surely-- he hates them. They’ve defied him thrice. They are, as they say, “largely inconvenient”. Killing them outright would solve many of his problems but Voldemort wants them to _hurt_ , and perhaps carrying out the letter of Severous Snape's desires but not the spirit will teach the man a broadly applicable lesson.   
  

      * He hurts Regulus. He thinks--  
  

      * Pushing a Wizard _elsewhere_ against their will is no small feat, even for a Wizard as powerful as Voldemort. Disorientation helps. Divided attention. Ensuring the wand is out of the picture.   
  

      * ...If the moment presents itself.   
  

  * The rat has been one of his for a while, now. When Peter Pettigrew opens his mouth and says _he’s_ been made secret keeper… Voldemort laughs.   
  

  * Halloween, 1981. It will not shock you to discover that Harry James Potter will be made an orphan, that he will gain a scar and a piece of soul both. That Voldemort _will_ die, however impermanently. But when they whisper the tale of the boy-who-lived, they spin a different story: that he-who-must-not-be-named destroyed Lily and James Potter so thoroughly, their bodies were never found.  
  

  * Let’s go back a step.  

  * Voldemort arrives at the little cottage in Godric’s Hollow just after Lily Potter puts her son to bed. Their wands are out of reach. They hadn’t expected the betrayal, you see. James had loved Peter Pettigrew as dearly as any brother.  
  

      * (He made that pun a lot.)  
  

  * James tries to hold Voldemort back, buy Lily enough time to grab Harry and the portkey and vanish somewhere safe. He fails on both counts. Voldemort slices him open, and takes advantage of his pain, his desperation, his disorientation. He takes James Potter and he pushes him _elsewhere.  
  
_
      * He won’t kill Lily Potter, Voldemort has decided. He won’t, but he _will_ kill her husband-- slowly, in front of her-- and _break_ her, and leave whatever remains for Snape.   
  

      * The letter, not the spirit.   
  

  * Voldemort finds the girl in front of the cradle. She isn’t armed. It amuses him-- that this silly little girl, silly little _mudblood_ thinks she can stop him. He orders her aside. She begs for her son’s life, with tears in eyes as cold and hard as the gemstones they are often compared to.   
  

  * (The dark lord’s downfall has ever been himself.)  
  

  * Dumbledore will wax poetic about the power of love, conquering all. Love was Grindlewald’s downfall, you see. Love was his own. Lily Potter loves her son with everything she has and more, and there _is_ power in that-- old magic, wild magic.   
  

  * Voldemort curses her to unconsciousness, and a dying woman saves her son the same way a dead woman does, even as she falls and cracks her head against the floorboards. She holds love in her heart alongside the rage, she lets it _out.  
  
_
  * Tom Marvolo “Voldemort” Riddle doesn’t notice anything amiss, when she falls. A fool. A blind one. Lily Potter saves her son with the power of love, you see, but let’s put that in different words: it is with love (rage) in her heart that Lily Potter shatters her own magical core. She will not survive long, like that, every scrap of magic contained within her body wrapped around her son like a warm blanket-- this is the final act of a dying woman, but she does it gladly. Unconsciously.   
  

  * Voldemort pushes her _elsewhere._ He casts the killing curse on a child not much older than one.   
  

      * It rebounds.  
  

      * You know this story.   
  

  * What you don’t know is this: ownership can always, _always_ be transferred, and when Voldemort dies (is torn apart) for the first time, he leaves behind a pocket of fairy-magic, and all the contents still within it. James Potter, cut open and bloody. Lily Potter, her magical core a shattered wreck. Poor, gullible Regulus Arcturus Black, jittering and hurt and terrified.   
  

  * Ownership can always be transferred. In this case, ownership _was,_ the moment that piece of Voldemort’s soul latched onto little Harry Potter like a parasite.   
  

      * He doesn’t notice, and nobody else does, either. Why would they?  
  

      * Time passes.



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have another chapter of this self indulgent mostly unedited nonsense in my drafts and the third partially written but if i want to get to any point here it's remus and sirius being homosexual together while sirius is pissed kreacher said gay rights when regulus came out but not him. and, generally speaking, harry potter having a good day. and james. and dumbledore regretting being dumbledore. a lot of things. i have thoughts but no energy to make it a proper fic. 
> 
> the next chapter is PART TWO, or, HARRY POTTER’S FIRST CHRISTMAS PRESENT


	2. PART TWO, or, HARRY POTTER’S FIRST CHRISTMAS PRESENT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> petunia and vernon dursley's no good very bad christmas eve. a scene, this time.

  * The year is 1986, and Harry James Potter is six years old.   
  

      * He is not a happy child. He does not have parents, like his cousin Dudley does. He does not have a bedroom, like his cousin Dudley does, just a dusty old spider-infested cupboard under the stairs. He does not have new clothes or friends or regular meals or toys-- all things his cousin Dudley has, in spades.   
  

      * He is loved, like Dudley is, but he doesn’t know it yet.   
  

      * He is _magic_ , like Dudley isn’t, but he doesn’t know that yet, either.  
  

  * It’s Christmas Eve, but that doesn’t matter much to Harry. If it does, it’s not in a good way-- _Aunt Marge_ (his Uncle’s sister, not Aunt Petunia’s, since that would be his Mum and she got into a car crash ‘cause she was _drunk_ and that’s how she _died_ ) is showing up, this year, and Harry loathes visits from Marge Dursley more then the cupboard or even his cousin’s friends.   
  

      * She’s mean. And her dogs are mean. And she _says things_ , and they make Harry Potter very angry, really.


  * Aunt Marge arrives. Harry hides out in his cupboard until his Uncle drags him out to do chores, and then he tries-and-fails to avoid Aunt Marge while Dudley drops things and makes messes that Harry has to clean and whines to open his Christmas presents early.   
  

      * (Petunia lets him open three. Harry doesn’t have to look under the tree to know he doesn’t have any, so he doesn’t try, or ask about it. Freaks like him don’t _get_ presents, his Aunt and Uncle say, and while Harry is beginning to question their logic he is still only six.


  * Harry isn’t supposed to sit at the dinner table, not when it’s _Christmas Eve,_ but ever since last year Aunt Petunia’s been having him do more and more of the cooking, not just the cleaning-- so he’s in the kitchen when Aunt Marge begins to talk, loudly, about his parents.   
  

      * She makes him so _angry_ he doesn’t have the words to say how much. And not just because he’s six, and doesn’t know them yet.  
  

      * The lights flicker. It occurs to Petunia Durlsey, who is cruel but not stupid, that something _freakish_ might be happening.  
  

  * Aunt Marge calls his Mum a nasty word, and his Dad something worse. Harry Potter, only six, takes one trembling step into the dining room, and tells her to _take that back.  
_
      * Aunt Marge laughs at him, and Harry sniffles, eyes full of angry tears.  
  

      * (They’re Lily’s eyes. Lily’s tears. Petunia goes pale.)  
  

      * “Take that _BACK_ ,” little Harry Potter says. His hands curl into fists. The lights flicker again.
  * Vernon’s face turns a nasty shade of purple. He doesn’t like it when Harry talks, least of all when Harry talks back. He growls something like _shut your mouth_ and something like _boy!_ and something like all of the other times he’s called Harry names, and Aunt Marge titters, and Petunia looks nervously at the flickering lights, and Dudley just laughs and laughs and _Harry--  
  
_
  * Harry just wants his parents back, so they can tell the Dursley's off and pick him up and take him very far away, where he can have a bedroom of his own and toys of his own and sit at the table and eat a Christmas feast and nobody says mean things or sets mean dogs to chase after him.   
  

      * Accidental magic is a fickle thing, but it knows intent well enough.  
  

      * Harry _is_ the owner, you see.  
  

  * CRACK!  
  

  * James Potter appears out of thin-air, twenty-one years old and bleeding from a deep slash in his gut that crawls up his body almost to his neck. He lands on a goose, straight in the center of the table, and knocks over all of Petunia’s nicest dishes and silverware. He is still disoriented, still angry-terrified-desperate, and as far as he is concerned it has been only seconds since Voldemort raised a wand to him.  

      * The table creaks. Petunia screams. Dudley stares. Vernon turns a new and interesting shade of purple, eyes bulging out of his head. Marge chokes on air.  
  

      * Harry does not say anything at all, but he thinks-  
  

      * James does not say anything at all either, but he does question, wildly, why he’s in hell (it must be hell if his sister-in-law is here).  
  

  * CRACK!  
  

  * Lily Evans Potter lands next to her husband, bouncing off the table and into her sister with all the momentum of a particularly misshapen bowling ball. Petunia _screams_ , a terrible shriek that propels several of her nosey neighbors to call the police.  

      * Lily’s skin is losing color rapidly, turning a sickly ashen grey. Witches and wizards _need_ their magic, you see. She’s alive (for now) but she will not be for much longer if something isn’t done about it.  
  

      * Harry does not have any proper pictures of his parents, but he has seen his mum— once— in an old family photograph Aunt Petunia keeps stashed in the attic, from when she was still a little girl. He is still crying, but the tears are more bewildered than angry.  
  

      * He thinks—  
  

  * The table makes a scary sound, but it holds it’s integrity.  
  

  * CRACK!  
  

  * Regulus Arcturus Black is screaming when he appears and screaming and when lands, flailing, on top of Aunt Marge. It has only been scant seconds (to him) since the last time he was dragged out in front of The Dark Lord, made to hurt, made to suffer, and he has little reason to believe now will be any different.   
  

      * Here’s something about Regulus Arcturus Black: he’s eighteen years old, still a teenager in many of the ways that matter, but the man (boy) was an athlete. If the wiry whole of him isn’t enough to knock Aunt Marge to the ground, his right hook is.
      * CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!  
  

      * It wasn’t just people Voldemort kept locked up, _elsewhere_. Coins and cursed daggers and swords and a few wands and a particularly memorable looking cup (keen eyes may recognize the latter as formerly belonging to Hufflepuff) hit the table all at once, propelled by a frightened child’s silent command to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, PLEASE.  
  

      * One of the wands belongs to Regulus. He’ll be pleased, when he’s coherent enough to notice.  
  

  * Still on the table, James Potter collects himself enough to say, “oh, _sod it_ ,” when it finally collapses under the weight of everything that landed, taking him down with it. He yelps. It’s very undignified-- but as he’s the one woozy with blood-loss, he doesn’t particularly care.  
  

  * James Potter presses a cold hand to his bleeding chest and, for the first time in the rough two-minutes he’s been Back, properly examines the scene. Taking it all in (though not Harry, in the door-way directly behind James and his messy thatch of black hair) it occurs to him to ask his sister-in-law _why_ he’s in hell-- though, not why hell looks like a miserably suburban living room. If it’s his personal hell, he reckons that makes enough sense.  
  

      * Petunia (still screaming) does not appreciate the question. She is not a woman that inspires _charitability_ , but to be charitable: her dead sister is dying on top of her.
      * Vernon (bellowing) does not appreciate the question, either, and the words he shouts cannot be repeated in polite company.  
  

      * James ignores them all, even the unexpectedly present _Regulus_ , because _what-the-buggering-fuck-why-not_ and--  
  

      * He notices Lily.   
  

      * “Lily,” he croaks. Lily Evans Potter does not belong in hell. This isn’t hell, then, which means--  
  

  * _Oh, God,_ James thinks. _Harry._ He needs to find--  
  

      * But Lily, going grey, and--  
  

      * Gryffindors are not known for indecision. He picks himself off the wreck of the table and limps over to his wife, an alarmingly large trail of blood in his wake. Priorities, then. She might know where Harry is anyway.   
  

  * And little Harry Potter says, “Mum? Dad?” in his quietest voice, quavering and small.   
  

      * James doesn’t respond. He can’t hear something that soft, overcome by the blood in his ears and his dying wife and his missing son. The irony will later occur to him.
  * Let us consider an alternate perspective: Dudley Dursley, six years old, is having a grand Christmas Eve. It is very interesting, all the goings-on, and Petunia and Vernon can quash fun and magic all they like but children will still be children. Dudley Dursley has long suspected that some of the strange things that happened around his cousin may be-- well, truly strange, though he of course attributed this to himself.   
  

      * (The irony will later occur to him).   
  

  * So. Dudley Dursley, six years old, pokes a crying-twitching Regulus (internally: the Long Haired Man, Whom His Father Would Call A Hippie) with a sticky spoon, one of the things the _other_ magic (magic!) stranger (the one that looked like Harry) knocked off the table before it fell apart.  
  

  * Regulus is no longer flailing quite so violently, but the poke elicits a long and shuddering flinch. He opens his eyes. He stares, incredulous. He closes them again. Whatever the hell is going on, the-- _revenue_ \-- is not particularly characteristic of Voldemort, that much is true, but how else would he…?  
  

      * His thoughts scatter like birds, like the enchanted starlets Cissy loved to play with when she was small and so was he and Bella and Andy and they were all just children, really, and Sirius was still here and yet to ruin everything but _really_ that had been Regulus, hadn’t it--  
  

  * “ _Black_ ,” James snaps. “I-- _you_ \-- what the _fuck_ is-- g-god, she’s not-- not gonna--” and his voice, breaking, “ _where is--!”  
  
_
  * “Daddy?” asks little Harry Potter.  
  

      * James Potter heard him, this time.   
  

      * He turns around, hand in Lily’s, locked in a death grip-- Petunia had wriggled out from under her sister and was backing away from the scene, breathing hard and fast and unsteadily.  
  

      * He turns around, and James Potter looks at this little (too _old_ , he should only be--) boy with Lily’s eyes and his own features and his father’s knobbly knees and he says--  
  

  * “Harry?”  
  

  * Harry Potter begins to cry in earnest, now. James Potter looks at his (too _old_ ) son and he grows paler, and paler, the blood loss and the stress and everything else that had occurred catching up to him like nothing else ever has or will again.  
  

  * Vernon Dursley has had _enough of this_ , thank you very much, and spins to each of the room’s freakish inhabitants in turn, finally settling on that blubbering hippy-type who had-- _socked_ his sweet sister, oh, he’ll pay for THAT--  
  

  * CRACK!  
  

      * Outside the house, this time. Apparition, Regulus and James might have noticed-- if Regulus were not lost in his own head, and James not so close to fainting.  
  

  * Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore knocks down the front-door.  
  

      * The ward’s have gone haywire, you see.  
  

      * You see--  
  

      * Well, _he_ doesn’t, until he looks, and then he sees quite an awful lot he hadn’t expected too this fine Christmas Eve.



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone is a bit too beat to shit to tell off the dursleys. everyone is going to be a bit too beat to shit to tell off the dursleys for a while. do not believe james noticed anything particularly off about harry in the face of harry being like, six, in general. at least reggie punched marge. 
> 
> lily isn't doing great. 
> 
> such is the consequences of a very stupid plot concept being taken very seriously


End file.
